


bitter sweet and salt (all the flavors we've got)

by Daftinthehead (intravenusann)



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Frottage, M/M, Misunderstandings, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:43:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/Daftinthehead
Summary: In ten years he wants to lick the sweat off his upper lip on stage in the summer and think of the salt on Hugo’s tongue.In ten years, Hugo hopes he’ll be kissing someone who wants him to stay.





	bitter sweet and salt (all the flavors we've got)

**Author's Note:**

> A request from an anonymous benefactor. I never thought that I would write something like this, but 2017 has been a weird year. Very sorry about Shelter endings, PortGo fans. I feel you :(

A celebration. A competition.

Porter tastes salt on Hugo’s tongue and it’s probably sweat. He can’t stop smiling even though Hugo kisses him again and again, licks at his lips and puts his tongue into Porter’s mouth. This feels good, it always feels good.

He thinks, maybe it’s always good because it was never going to last. They can’t do this forever. He wouldn’t want to. It would get boring, wouldn’t it? Better if he always remembered it was going to be over.

Porter pulls away and holds the sides of Hugo’s face when he tries to lunge forward. He just can’t stop smiling and probably, definitely looks like an idiot. Hugo isn’t exactly smiling back.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Porter says. “Just looking at you.”

Hugo sighs. He puts a hand around Porter’s wrist and leans into his palm.

“I’m not going to see you again for a while,” he says.

Hugo looks away from him, but squeezes his hand around Porter’s wrist.

“A month at least,” Porter adds. “Probably longer, though.”

“Yeah,” Hugo says.

He wishes Porter wouldn’t mention that now. He wonders whether or not he’s doing this on purpose or if he’s just that naive, but he knows. Porter isn’t cruel, exactly. Not on purpose, anyway. He wouldn’t even want to kiss him if he was.

And he wants to kiss him so badly.

Hugo leans forward, pushes past the hold Porter has on him until Porter moves his hands into his hair. He kisses him again, sucking Porter’s lower lip into his mouth.

“Is this the last time I’ll ever get to do this?” Hugo thinks.

“This is the last time I’ll ever get to do this,” Porter thinks.

It feels like a privilege, a blessing, a miracle. In ten years he wants to lick the sweat off his upper lip on stage in the summer and think of the salt on Hugo’s tongue.

In ten years, Hugo hopes he’ll be kissing someone who wants him to stay. But right in this moment, there’s no one else he wants to kiss. He holds Porter by the back of the neck now, with both hands, so he can’t pull away again.

He bites Porter’s lips when he kisses back. Kisses him hard enough that their teeth scrape together. He shivers from it. He breathes into Porter’s mouth and feels Porter trying to breathe around his tongue.

“Oh shit,” Porter says.

Hugo pulls back. “What?”

“This is so intense,” Porter says. “It’s always so intense.”

“Yes,” Hugo says. That’s the point, he thinks. He wants that to be the point. He wants to press his feelings into Porter with his hands, since nothing else works. He’s not going to get another chance, he thinks. Not ever.

“Thank you,” Porter says. He kisses Hugo.

“Just thank you,” he says again before he licks into Hugo’s mouth.

Porter kisses him again and again and again. He presses his lips to Hugo’s and then pulls right back to do it again. He keeps his eyes closed and presses so close that his nose gets crushed against Hugo’s cheek. His chin is a little pink from Hugo’s facial hair rubbing against it.

“Thank you,” he says again, while combing his fingers through Hugo’s hair.

It’s so soft, he thinks. He’s so lucky to have this. He doesn’t know how to make Hugo understand how happy and grateful he feels around him all the time. How special everything has been. How it feels like a dream and when he wakes up he’s going to be a different person.

He can say “thank you” and he can kiss him. That feels like all he can do, so it has to be enough.

Hugo’s hands move from his neck to his shoulders and he pushes. Porter laughs and lets Hugo push him back, if that’s what he wants to do. Hugo leans over him and his hair falls in his face. He looks beautiful, really, but if Porter says that it won’t sound the way wants it to.

He’s already said so much shit he regrets and he doesn’t want to do that now.

He can’t ruin their last night together. Not when he can tell Hugo’s trying to make it special.

“Do you wanna?” Porter starts to ask and Hugo looks down at him. His brows draw together and Porter just shuts his mouth.

He’s trying not to fuck this up.

That’s why there’s an end. It’s not going to go on forever and ever. It’s not going to be something they fight over or get tired of. It’s not going to be something that he looks back on in ten years and regrets. It’s something beautiful and fleeting and beautiful because it’s fleeting.

“Yes,” Hugo says. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah,” Porter says. “With you.”

Porter tilts his chin up at Hugo and closes his eyes, asking to be kissed. Hugo doesn’t think Porter really means it when he says he wants this. He knows that Porter does mean it, but he doesn’t mean it the way that Hugo means it. He doesn’t mean it the way Hugo wishes he meant it.

But he presses down and kisses Porter all the same. He’s not going to miss his last chance.

Is this it?

He kisses Porter until he’s breathing hard against him. Hugo presses close enough to feel his chest rising and falling. He’s pretty fit, Hugo knows. The first times they did this it wore Hugo out, but not Porter. He’s really got to put in an effort to make Porter breathless.

Of course he’s going to make the effort now.

He bites Porter’s lip hard, until Porter whines and tries to pull away.

“Ow,” he says. Porter laughs and touches his mouth.

“You know I’m going to miss you, right?” Porter asks. He doesn’t know if Hugo wants him to bite back or not.

“Because I am,” he adds.

“I already miss you,” Hugo says.

“Hey, don’t,” Porter says. “I’m right here.”

He smiles at Hugo.

“Want me to take my shirt off?” he asks.

“Yes,” Hugo tells him and Porter wiggles underneath him as he yanks the hem of his shirt out from under Hugo’s thighs. He’s straddling Porter’s legs, close but not too close.

“Okay, but you gotta,” Porter starts. “You should take yours off too. I want to see you.”

Hugo wants to be seen. He wants to be the only person Porter wants to see with his shirt off for the rest of his life. He wants Porter to text him at six in the morning from a dark hotel room asking him to send a picture because he misses him.

He yanks his shirt off so fast that it leaves half of his hair hanging in his face. Porter laughs and gives him this smile that he used to just think was kind of goofy. He remembers thinking that, but now it makes his heart hurt. Porter’s so beautiful and he can’t even tell him that.

Porter reaches up and brushes the hair back from Hugo’s face.

“Come here,” he says, and he pulls Hugo in for another kiss.

Hugo wouldn’t press down close enough for their chests to touch, not on his own. But Porter moves his hands to Hugo’s ribs and puts his arms around him as they kiss. He wraps Hugo up and pulls him so close that Hugo feels Porter’s heart pounding in his chest. Everything is so warm and a little sweat-sticky.

Hugo feels those sparks that he’s only ever felt with Porter. He puts his arms under Porter’s head, holds the back of his head.

“You feel so good,” Hugo says, because he can’t say “I love you.”

He does sometimes, but he’s not going to do that to himself. Not tonight.

Tonight, Hugo holds the back of Porter’s head and moves his mouth down his chin to rub his face against Porter’s throat. He breathes him and tells himself, “Remember this.”

He’s hot as the desert against Hugo’s face and he smells like sweat. Porter’s hair smells like Hugo’s brand of cigarettes. It’s the closest Hugo gets to feeling like Porter belongs to him, somehow even more intimate than letting Porter steal his clothes or share the shower.

Porter gets the giggles from Hugo’s facial hair against his neck, but he’ll miss this. He knows he will. So he’s not going to beg him to stop.

But when Hugo starts to suck on the skin of his neck, Porter arches his whole body.

“Stop, stop,” he says, even though it makes his dick throb. It feels good, but, “Hugo, come on, man, you can’t give me a hickey. She’d be pissed.”

Hugo stops. He freezes in Porter’s arms.

“Fine,” he says.

“Sorry,” Porter offers.

“No, it’s fine,” Hugo says. He’s lying. Really, he thinks, maybe he deserves to get exactly what he has because he always finds himself giving into this urge. He’ll lie to Porter if it means Porter won’t stop him.

He lets Porter know he loves him, but never makes Porter worry that he’s in love with him.

Porter knows Hugo’s disappointed.

“Do you wanna stop?” he asks.

“No!” Hugo says. He pushes himself up on the elbows and looks at Porter.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Not at all,” Porter says. “Come on, kiss me.”

If he can’t leave bruises on Porter’s neck, Hugo swears he’s going to leave Porter’s mouth so tender he feels Hugo’s teeth when he kisses her the next time. This, Porter doesn’t refuse.

He whines into Hugo’s mouth and arches his back. His hips push up against Hugo from under him. He wants Hugo on top of him properly, but doesn’t know if he can ask for that.

Then Hugo gives it to him anyway, without him having to ask. He settles his weight right over Porter’s hips and he totally moans for it. Then he has to stop and laugh at himself, but Hugo kisses him through that too.

“Fuck,” he says. “I’m getting carried away.”

“Me too,” Hugo says, between biting kisses.

“Do you,” Porter starts to say.

Hugo stops kissing him entirely.

“What?”

“Uh,” Porter says.

Where is the edge on this? What’s the limit? He doesn’t want to spoil things, but he wants to grab everything that he can before it’s over.

He wants this to be good.

He doesn’t want to regret it.

“Can I touch you?” Porter asks.

“You’re already touching me,” Hugo says.

“I mean, can I touch your dick?” Porter asks. “Is this one of those times or not.”

“It could be,” Hugo says. “Do you want it to be?”

“Yes,” Porter says. “Obviously.”

“Alright,” Hugo says. He unwraps himself from around Porter, and Porter lets him go enough to sit up. His hands rest on Hugo’s hips.

Porter looks at him as he unbuttons his jeans and Hugo wants Porter to never look at anyone else like that.

“So I can’t kiss your neck,” he says, “but this is fine?”

“Yeah,” Porter says, like that makes sense. But it does to him.

“She’s okay with this,” he says, and Hugo doesn’t even know if that’s true. But it is.

“She just doesn’t want to know the gory details.”

Hugo wonders what’s gory about this, but he does sometimes feel like Porter’s tearing his heart out of his chest when he talks about her. Especially when he’s hard between Hugo’s legs and they’re talking about jerking each other off.

But this is already over, Hugo figures, and he’s going to take whatever he can get while he still has Porter within armsreach.

Porter feels wildly grateful that Hugo doesn’t just kick him out of bed right then.

Instead, Hugo says, “Fine.”

He starts to push his jeans down his hips and he lets Porter touch his naked hips. Porter bites his tongue to keep any stupid comments to himself.

“Holy shit,” he says, and that’s about all he’ll allow himself.

He looks up at Hugo’s face as Hugo struggles out of his jeans while astride Porter’s lap. He’s not really helping, but he doesn’t know what Hugo wants him to do.

“You should take your jeans off, too,” Hugo says. “Or is this just me?”

“Okay,” Porter says. “I mean, no, not just you.”

He pushes himself out from under Hugo and gets up on his knees. They’re about the same height this way, because Hugo’s all legs. Porter gets his jeans and boxers off before he puts his hands on Hugo again. He needs to kiss him and Hugo always kisses him back.

He’s using a lot of teeth tonight, Porter thinks.

And maybe Porter should say something, because a bruised and swollen mouth seems like something he agreed not to do with Hugo. But he just can’t. It feels good. Maybe even a little right.

He wraps his arms around Hugo’s waist and shuffles forward on the bed. Gets so close that his cock bumps into Hugo’s hip. Hugo tenses up.

“Sorry,” Porter says. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Hugo says. “It’s fine.”

“I’m going to,” Porter starts. “Can I touch you?”

“I already said yes,” Hugo tells him.

Porter laughs, at himself mostly. He puts a hand around Hugo’s dick and it’s hot in his hand. At this point, it feels nearly as familiar as his own. Especially from this angle, he knows just how to do this. At first, he didn’t really. He was so uncertain and he asked Hugo every five seconds, “Is this okay?”

Like giving a handjob was harder than programming a percussion track.

And now, Porter thinks, he just knows what to do.

Hug puts his arms around Porter’s neck and buries his face between his arm and Porter’s body. He doesn’t bother putting a hand on Porter, because he is already pressing close enough to rub himself against Hugo’s thigh. Hugo spreads his thighs and lets Porter fit himself even closer.

It probably hurts his wrist. Hugo hopes it does.

He hopes Porter will feel this not just tomorrow but all week.

“Kiss me,” Porter says. It’s a whisper.

Hugo lifts his head up and looks Porter right in the eye.

Is it too intimate? Porter draws his face close to Hugo until their noses touch.

He doesn’t ask again for Hugo to kiss him, but Hugo does. He moves his hand faster on Hugo’s dick as Hugo bites at his already sore mouth.

“Hey, Hugo,” Porter says, losing his breath into Hugo’s open mouth.

Hugo keeps kissing him, but Porter feels so good with their bodies pushed together this way.

And anyway, he thinks, this is his last chance. He should make it good.

“Can I put my mouth,” he starts.

“Yes,” Hugo says, before he’s finished.

Porter huffs a laugh right against Hugo’s lips.

“Okay,” he says.

“Lay down,” he tells Hugo.

Hugo does, though he knows he shouldn’t. He stretches his body out for Porter and lets him arrange his legs how he wants him. He puts his hands all over Hugo’s arms, his chest, his hips.

“This feels so good,” Porter says.

“So keep doing it,” Hugo tells him.

Porter puts his mouth everywhere he just put his hands. He kisses all sweetly, in a way that makes Hugo hiss between his teeth. Porter’s mouth brushes softly over his collarbone and down his sternum. He hears the pounding of his heart and the wet press of Porter’s lips.

Porter runs his tongue over Hugo’s ribs and his whole body jerks. He can feel Porter smiling against his skin. He’s laughing. Hugo puts his hands on the top of Porter’s head and pushes him down, closer to his hard dick.

“Okay, okay,” Porter says, and he laughs about this too.

Porter kisses the right point of Hugo’s hipbone, then the left.

He feels giddy, like this is how it should always be: fun.

He kisses the very tip of Hugo’s cock, then swipes his tongue across it really quick. It tastes like salt and bitterness, but he doesn’t exactly expect it to taste like strawberries. Though it’s just as red. Porter puts a hand around Hugo and jerks him off just to see the skin move.

Then he bends down and puts the head of Hugo’s cock in his mouth. His lips feel raw from the scrap of Hugo’s teeth. He feels like too much blood and nerves. But Hugo is hot inside his mouth. After a minute, he can’t even taste anything but his spit. It runs down over his hand.

The last time he did this, that felt humiliatingly gross. But now it doesn’t.

Hugo runs his hands over Porter’s hair. He touches him softly, really, just brushing his fingertips over the shell of Porter’s ear. When Porter looks up, Hugo’s holding himself up so he can look at him. His body curves and he’s sort of quivering from the strain.

Maybe, Porter thinks, he shouldn’t have asked Hugo to lie down. But he didn’t know he wanted to watch like this.

He pulls off with a wet pop.

“Don’t stop,” Hugo says. “Please.”

Porter puts his head down, his mouth back on Hugo’s dick. Hugo breathes hard and thinks about Porter’s girlfriend because that’s the one thing he knows will keep him from coming too soon. He thinks about the chemical smell of airport carpets. He thinks about the feeling of his shoes sticking to an alcohol-sticky dance floor after a show.

When he comes, he knows, this will be over.

That’s the most effective thought to keep him from getting off.

“Porter,” he says. “Porter stop.”

He does, immediately.

“What’s wrong?” Porter asks.

His brows knit together and there’s spit running down his chin. He is so beautiful that it hurts to look at him this way. He looks worried.

“I want to kiss you,” Hugo says.

He’s being too sentimental and it’s going to get him into trouble. But the worry relaxes off Porter’s face. He sighs. Even in the low light of a hotel’s side table lamp, Hugo can see the flush in the top of Porter’s cheeks. His mouth looks so flushed, a dark pink like the inside of a rose.

Hugo wasn’t this sentimental before he met Porter, but he kind of grew into it.

He has been in love with Porter for half his life, he thinks. And this is the break-up sex before they even really got together.

He was going to say something, he tells himself.

Porter kisses Hugo and then pushes their foreheads together. He wishes he could just will all the things he thinks and feels right into Hugo’s head. But he can’t and if he says the words, if he can even find them, it won’t come out right.

He wants to make Hugo feel good. He wants Hugo to remember him at his best, because this is his best. This whole time has been his best. He’s going to wake up any second, but he’s going to wake up a different person.

“This is the best,” Porter says, instead. And that’s not enough. Hugo looks up at him and he just looks confused.

“Whatever,” Hugo says.

When he pushes at Porter’s shoulders, Porter happily rolls over. The bed is big enough for three people as tall and skinny as they are. There are two beds, but they got used to sharing before they even went on tour.

It’s been so good, Hugo thinks, sleeping beside Porter.

They’ve been sleeping together and having sex, but they haven’t really been _sleeping together_. Porter will talk to his girlfriend about it, at least, but Hugo can’t believe that. He can’t believe Porter would ever acknowledge this to anyone.

Hugo holds him down against the bed and grinds his hips against Porter’s. Their cocks don’t fit together. Porter’s is thicker and shorter and Hugo’s slides against his, rubbing against his hips and belly instead. Their thighs stick together with sweat.

He doesn’t bite Porter’s lips. He licks them instead, dipping into Porter’s mouth and wondering if he can taste himself.

Porter thinks the same thing, but he could never say it. Out of his mouth, it would sound like something out of bad porn. He wants Hugo to be able to taste his own cock on his tongue, though. That would be pretty hot actually.

He rocks his hips up against Hugo’s. He arches his back and braces his heels on the bed. He tilts his chin and turns his face. He’s making tangles into the back of his hair by rubbing against the pillowcase above his head and the bedspread under his back.

“Come on,” Porter says. “I want you to.”

“I want you,” Hugo says, and Porter realizes he’s misheard him but it doesn’t matter.

He puts his arms around Hugo and squeezes. Hugo thrusts against him hard and fast.

“Porter,” he says, and then he says a bunch of stuff in French that Porter could probably understand if he made the effort.

Hugo knows it’s a stupid risk. He tells Porter that he wants to fuck him, that he wants to marry him, that he wants him forever, until they die. He presses his face between Porter’s neck and shoulder. He refuses to kiss him when he comes.

But Porter holds onto him all the same, through it. He pants and moans — but not too loud — into the open space of their hotel room. Hugo keeps moving even when he’s just sliding his cock against his own come on Porter’s skin.

“Please,” Porter says.

Hugo pulls away and Porter whines. “No, come on, Hugo.”

“I’m going to suck you off,” Hugo says, and Porter shuts up.

“Oh,” he says. He puts both his hands over his face and feels his skin burning under his sweaty palms. He swallows.

“Okay, if you want,” he says. “But only if you want.”

Hugo licks a stripe up Porter’s belly, tasting Porter’s sweat and his own come. Salt and bitterness; nothing pleasant at all. He wants to remember that.

He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t tuck his lips over his teeth.

Porter gasps and swears and bucks his hips. Hugo holds him down with one hand.

“Fuck,” Porter says. “No teeth, please, Hugo.”

But he still moans when Hugo sucks so hard his cheeks go hollow. Porter reaches down and digs his fingers deep into Hugo’s hair. He makes a fist and Hugo feels every single hair that Porter yanks on. Porter keeps him from taking his cock all the way into his mouth like this, but Hugo figures that’s Porter’s problem and not his.

But he uses his hand to compensate.

Even Porter’s cock, which is just wide enough to make Hugo’s jaw ache — but not long enough to make this uncomfortable, is slick with some of Hugo’s come. He wants Porter to come in his mouth, even though it will be awful.

“Hugo,” Porter moans. The sound echoes inside Hugo’s head louder than it does in the room.

Porter can’t believe himself. He jerks his hips up against Hugo; Hugo doesn’t give him even a centimeter of leeway. He makes so many stupid noises.

“I’m going to,” he says.

“If you don’t stop,” he says.

“Please,” he says.

“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.”

Hugo doesn’t want to. This feels like a little bit of power that he has over Porter. At least he’s not begging Porter the way Porter begs for him.

But then Porter comes, and it is so wet inside Hugo’s mouth even when he swallows and swallows. Porter muffles himself with one hand, but Hugo can hear him. Hugo hopes he’s the only one who can.

He pulls away and swallows again. On the bed, Porter looks like a mess. Hugo coughs and covers his mouth. His eyes itch. He blinks and blinks until a hot tear wells up at the corner of his right eye. He wipes it away with the back of his hand before it can fall.

“Kiss me,” Porter says, holding his arms up toward Hugo.

Hugo lets himself fall right on top of Porter. Porter huffs out a huge breath and starts to laugh really hard. But Hugo kisses him even when he’s laughing.

“That was the best way to celebrate our accomplishments,” Porter says. “Wow.”

Hugo kisses him again.

“If you say so,” he says. He kisses and kisses and kisses. He knows Porter can taste himself on his tongue.

Porter puts his arms around Hugo’s ribs and thinks about every word he knows for thank you. He doesn’t know enough and none of them will ever get it across to Hugo. He’s done so much and he never had to. He didn’t.

It’s going to be really, really over when they leave tomorrow. Porter won’t see Hugo for a while, probably. He can’t wait to hear what Hugo creates after this.

This has felt like a dream since the beginning, but he always knew he was going to wake up. It’s too good. It had to end.

Hugo thinks that it’s already over and he wishes Porter would let go of him. He can feel the air conditioner blowing over his naked butt. He’s getting cold and breaking out in goosebumps from it.

He wishes it didn’t have to end.

“I’m getting cold,” Hugo says.

“I’m perfectly cozy,” Porter says. “You’re the best space heater.”

“Thank you,” Hugo says. “I guess.”

Porter hums something tuneless, but happy. Hugo feels the happiness leaking out of him like sweat. They’re going to stick together if they lay here too much longer. He knows this but he still turns away and rests his head on Porter’s shoulder.

Now he smells mostly like sweat instead of the last cigarette Hugo smoked.

Porter feels like he’s floating in the ocean — no, in space. He breathes and Hugo breathes in unison with him. It’s so intimate and Porter feels so grateful.

“Let me remember us this way,” he thinks, “exactly this way.”

“I should move to the other bed,” Hugo says.

“What?” Porter asks. “Why?”

Hugo pulls away from him and reaches for his phone on the side table. “We’ve got to be awake in three hours.”

“So what?” Porter asks. “Come on, we still have three hours.”

“We’re going to have to get used to sleeping alone again,” Hugo says.

“Yeah,” Porter says. “But that can be tomorrow.”

“I’d like to get some rest,” Hugo says.

“Oh,” Porter says. He gives up the fight before it’s even a fight. “Yeah, alright.”

Hugo gets up and his knees feel liquid. Porter watches as Hugo picks up his boxers and his shirt off the bed and crosses the three feet to the other king-size bed. It’s only a little space, but it feels like an impassable canyon.

Porter won’t have to get used to sleeping alone, Hugo thinks. But he will.

Laying naked on top of the bedspread, Porter gets cold really fast without Hugo on top of him. He doesn’t bother putting his underwear on, but he slips under the sheets. It’s cool under the sheets and his pillow is warm, the worst possible combination. He flips the pillow over, at least, but it will take longer for the sheets to warm up.

He’d be warm if Hugo was sharing the bed with him, he thinks, but he understands. He’s tired too.

He’s never going to get this again, really, so Porter looks across to the other bed and watches the back of Hugo’s head. He watches the rise and fall of his breathing under the sheets. Porter lets himself fall into sync with it.

“This was the best year of my life,” Porter says. “Thank you.”

“For me, also,” Hugo says. “Thanks, Porter.”

That makes him smile, because he just doesn’t want Hugo to regret this. He doesn’t want to regret it either. There have been so many missteps already, so many times he totally fucked up. This way, the end is tidy and comes right as they have everything perfect. Every show was good. Every night together just felt right.

Porter falls asleep watching Hugo fall asleep.

Two and a half hours later, Hugo’s alarm on his phone goes off.

Porter groans as he yawns. Hugo burrows deeper under the blankets, but he mumbles out something that might be a thank you when Porter reaches over and almost falls off the bed to silence the alarm.

Porter throws himself back against the bed with a thud.

“I hate this part,” he says.

“Me too,” the Hugo-shaped lump of blankets on the other bed says.

“You can have the bathroom first,” Hugo adds.

Porter slides out of bed and only stumbles a little in the dark.

“Thanks,” he says, “that’s sweet of you.”

The inside of Porter’s mouth feels like a desert and tastes even worse. Dried come flakes off his skin when he scratches his stomach. He drinks some of the tap water even though it’s bitter with minerals, and even swishes it around in his mouth then spits.

He takes a shower.

“When I get out of this bed,” Hugo thinks, “it’s over.”

He wants to shower with Porter. He wants to see him wet and naked and washing Hugo’s come off his body. He wants to watch the way the water runs down the thighs and the way it sometimes gathers into a big stream down his back and cascades over the curve of Porter’s hip or his butt. Instead, he lays in bed and thinks about these things he’ll never get to see again.

His second alarm goes off, but Porter is still in the shower so Hugo has to get up and silence it himself.

He licks his dry lips and tastes salt on his skin. But the taste of Porter has already been wiped away by sleep. If he wanted to, he could go out on the balcony and smoke. That would totally burn the taste out of his mouth. But he doesn’t need to.

He’ll save it for closer to when he has to get on a plane. He can smoke in the hotel or on the drive to the airport, even though it’s America, but he can’t smoke at all on the plane.

“It’s all yours,” Porter says, walking out with a towel around his hips and one draped over his head.

“Thank you,” Hugo says, watching him walk through the room.

It’s already over, and the bitterness on his tongue is gone.

He’s lost it without trying.


End file.
